SHADOW-SPARRING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23321, 13 October 1937, Page 8

SHADOW-SPARRING

The offer by the Prime Minister to permit the Leader of the Opposition to name the date of the next general election has been made with an assumed air of seriousness. If Mr Hamilton had accepted it, and named an early date for the election, he would at once have laid himself open to the charge that he was seeking to prevent the Government from completing the programme which it has set before itself for this Parliament and that he was deliberately putting the country to the heavy expense of a premature election. Mr Savage has repeated his challenge. It would be a mistake on the part of the country to suppose that there is any generosity in it. The benefit of a forced election at the present time would lie wholly with the Government. Not only would it make all the political capital that was possible out of its being driven to hold a general election in circumstances which, it would state, deprived it of the opportunity of carrying its programme into effect during the currency of the Parliament, but it would enjoy the advantage that it possesses a complete electoral organisation, whereas the National Party is only in process of organising its forces and would be unable to complete this process before an early election was- held. A challenge such as that issued by Mr Savage is unusual and would be made only by a parliamentary leader who did not appreciate fully the responsibilities which are owing by him to the country. The idea that a Parliament should be dissolved, and a country thrown into the whirl of a general election, at the mere whim of its leader is not one that accords with a due sense of constitutional procedure. It ignores, moreover, certain practical considerations. The official preparations for the holding of a general election, including the revision and printing of the electoral rolls and the arrangement of the details for the polling, consume a great deal

lof time. To ask for an immediate general election, even if there were a genuine reason for one, is to ask for the impossible. Mr Savage should know this as well as Mr Hamilton does.